11/29/16 Report - Detecting Surf and Turf. Button Finds. Digging Egyptian Movie Artifacts in California.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Tis the season to be jolly.  Anytime you can be jolly is the season to be jolly, but for beach hunters, the winter months are generally better than the summer months, unless there is a summer storm that shakes things up. From my personal experience, October to April is the best time to find cobs on the beach, with Nov. to February usually being the best of those.  It is the opposite of the salvage season around here, which relies on the smoother summer surf.  More likely than not we'll have some good opportunities to find cobs on the beach in the next couple of months.

Dan B. was hunting in South Carolina.  Here is what he had to say about that.

I spent a solid week of research before heading to SC this year. I was surprised at how difficult things can be if they are not in one's own back yard. Going to unfamiliar territory is strangely challenging. Surprised that anything could stand in my way, I found that everything did. Satellite photos of streams were bulging rivers. The ground and roots in some places combined with many inches of leaf litter reminded me of how nice it is to dig in sugar sand.  Trees were down everywhere and shotgun shells seem to be more of an issue than pop tops. Overall, I had a nice time in the woods and learned to appreciate my neck of the woods more. I was able to pull a nice variety of different buttons.

It is nice to be able to hunt various types of locations and do different types of detecting.  It is difficult though - especially if you are accustomed to one type of location and one type of hunting.

Most of us beach hunters know the beaches that we hunt.  We figured out what type of detector we need and are prepared for the sand and surf.  In other locations our equipment might not be so well suited to the environment.

Sifting sand through a scoop is one thing, but digging in rocks or clay is another.  You might choose both a different detector and a different type of recovery tool.  It can be difficult to see a coin covered with clay, or dig through rocks and pebbles without destroying the coin, or find a target in a pile of leaves.  Those are all things I have to do when I detect my favorite site in West Virginia.

A different search strategy might be required too.  You don't have the surf to sift and sort things when you are not on the beach.  You might have some sifting and sorting though, as I described in a recent post.  You have water runoff, and you have erosion in some spots, so there are some similarities.

Buttons Found by Dan B. During A  Land Hunt In S. C.

Here is what Dan said about the button finds.

Large flatty with no front design and broken shank. Looking closely you can see "plated" on the second.  The last two don't appear as old.

Thanks Dan.

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Los Angeles, CA)—Artifacts from the epic movie "The Ten Commandments" are starting to surface from underneath the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in California...

A giant sphinx was found in the dunes earlier this year and it's currently on display at the nonprofit Dunes Center in Guadalupe. More remains are expected to be found from a "lost city" that boasted a huge temple, four more sphinxes, massive statues, a 750-foot-long wall, and amenities.

Hamilton said roughly 2,500 people lived in the camp for several months during the film's production...

Here is the link for the rest of that story.

http://www.breakingchristiannews.com/articles/display_art.html?ID=17132

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That is all for today.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

11/17/16 Report - On The Beach Or In The Hills Some Things Remain The Same. Sanitation Workers Find Wedding Ring.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Showing Recovered Wedding Ring.
Source: See link below.

Sanitation workers dug through tons of trash to find this lady's lost ring.

Here is the link for that story.

http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/ny-sanitation-crew-finds-womans-lost-wedding-rings/story?id=43574824

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Not long ago I was hunting in the hills of West Virginia.  While I was doing that I noticed several similarities to beach hunting.

It was very hilly.  You can see that in the photo I showed in my 11/14 post.

There was a flat spot about a quarter of the size of a football field.  It was down the hill from an old settlement, and I know that it was heavily used.  There were certainly many thing lost there, yet I found almost nothing there but aluminum.  Why?  Because tons of leaves piled up and rotted there year after year for hundreds of years.  The leaves were piled about a half a foot deep, then under that was partly rotted leaves, and under that very loose new soil.  Anything of any age was deep, except for the stuff like aluminum foil, which remained on top of it all.

That flat area was very much like an area on a beach where the sand is very loose.  The loose sand moves in and covers any stationary objects, just like the leaves covered more stationary objects on the flat spot.

That wasn't the only area that was similar to a beach area.  They had heavy rain there last summer. The rain ran down some of the steeper areas and washed leaves and loose soil off the slope.  The result is that some surface objects were removed with the top lighter soil.  Some things were left behind though.  That area was also very much like a beach in some ways.

You'll might remember my lengthy discussions on "trigger points" and "drop points."   When the force of water is great enough some objects will be moved and others not moved.  The same thing applies to hilly land.  (For more on trigger and drop points, see my 8/30/15 post.)

The top soil and some objects got washed down over the slopes where the slope was great enough and the water flow forceful enough.  It as on such a slope that I found the oldest coin (about 100 years old).

The same slope  was very hard packed.  That was because the looser soil was washed off with some objects.  Whatever washed off the slope ended up at the bottom of the slope, whether that was a flat area or a gully.

I'm sure that if I could move a foot or more of soil, the flat area would produce a lot of older coins and things.  As it was, the older materials were found on the slopes.

One way that that land was different from a beach is that there were roots and a lot of rocks.  The roots and rocks held some of the items that would have been moved by the water.

Old bottles also washed out of the hillside along the gullies.

No matter whether you are on a beach or in the hills, I'm always happy to see erosion.  Erosion can always uncover some older items.  It also moves sand or soil that can cover up items.

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A six-thousand-year-old underwater site was mapped and artifacts recovered.

Here is the link to that interesting article.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/underwater-stone-age-settlement-haven-fishing-yields-mysterious-elk-antler-pick-axe-1591682

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We're going to have a small surf for a few days, but big tides, at least tomorrow.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net